I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for supporting operation of relays in wireless communication networks.
II. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless network may include a number of base stations that can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs). The wireless network may also include relays that can improve the coverage and capacity of the wireless network without the need for a potentially expensive wired backhaul link. A relay may be a “decode and forward” station that may receive a signal from an upstream station (e.g., a base station), process the received signal to recover data sent in the signal, generate a relay signal based on the recovered data, and transmit the relay signal to a downstream station (e.g., a UE).
A relay may communicate with a base station on a backhaul link and may appear as a UE to the base station. The relay may also communicate with one or more UEs on an access link and may appear as a base station to the UE(s). The relay may be a half-duplex relay that cannot transmit and receive at the same time on the same frequency channel. Hence, the backhaul link and the access link may be time division multiplexed. Furthermore, the wireless network may have certain requirements that may impact the operation of the relay. It may be desirable to support efficient operation of the relay in light of its transmit/receive limitations as well as other network requirements.